Motorola (now owned by Google) recently announced Project Ara which will allow manufacturers to customize your phone. Let’s say, you are someone who uses their phone largely as a camera (apart from using it as a phone of course), then you could ask for 40 megapixel camera and nothing else – no accelerators, no touch screen, or you could want a higher on board storage or maybe you just upgrade your RAM- you could specify what you want in your phone. This is the ultimate Do it Yourself project for Phones.

And of course, this is Google – so customizing will be available to everyone worldwide.

If you are in India, you are probably familiar with assembled PCs, where local hardware vendors would put together a motherboard, RAM, processor, HDD and so on to build a custom for you – this, is exactly like that. Our jugaad philosophy has already done this (I am so proud!!), albeit at a much much lower scale.

The way this is expected to work is that Motorola will drive building of hardware ‘modules’ – so imagine your phone comprising of a camera module, a RAM module, a processor module, keyboard module and so on. The aim is to build these modules and not the phone itself – one could then, theoretically, combine these modules in a single customized phone.

Now the key question is – how many people will actually use this service? Can you be bothered about the specs of your phone? How many people even know the hardware specs of their phone – maybe they will now?

There is a reason why I never bought an ‘assembled’ PC – to my mind, hardware has to be well integrated to deliver a great experience. It’s the reason why Apple devices work so well – they control both hardware and OS for their devices. In my experience, people typically buy a new phone because they want a ‘new’ phone – I don’t know of anybody who switches their phone because they want a higher RAM or faster accelerator. Also, with Chinese OEMs like Foxconn, hardware is no longer a differentiating factor – phone (at least smartphones) sales are now driven by Design, Apps, or simply, the ‘new shiny thing’factor. Can you image an HTC One or Apple 5S being built using ‘off-the-shelf’ modules?